AVIONICS USA, SAN DIEGO, CA — June 1, 2009 — Green Hills Software, Inc., the world leader in safe and secure operating systems, today announced the availability of three new high assurance software components for its INTEGRITY®-178B real-time operating system (RTOS): an RTCA/DO-178B Level A-compliant Partitioning Journaling File System called PJFS-178B, an RTCA/DO-178B Level A-compliant network stack, called IPFLITE, and an ARINC 615A dataloader.
The Journaling File System provides multiple INTEGRITY-178B partitions with concurrent power-fail safe access to an underlying file system. IPFLITE’s client/server architecture allows multiple applications to access the underlying network stack that resides in a virtual INTEGRITY-178B partition. PJFS-178B, IPFLITE and the ARINC 615A dataloader are available as optional components for Green Hills Software’s industry-leading INTEGRITY-178B operating system.
With the introduction of these additional high assurance components for INTEGRITY-178B, Green Hills Software continues to widen its lead over the second tier RTOS suppliers. This announcement also follows the U.S. Government’s recent announcement that INTEGRITY-178B has been certified to the highest security assurance level required by the U.S. Government for operating systems – EAL6+/High Robustness. This EAL6+ certification is the first of its kind, the highest Common Criteria security level ever achieved for an operating system. Only an EAL6+ High Robustness operating system is certified to protect classified information and other high value resources from attack by hostile and well-funded attackers. This is secure by anyone’s definition. The highest security standard to which any other operating system is certified only protects against “inadvertent or casual attempts to breach the system security.” That is not even close to secure by anyone’s definition.
With the new PJFS-178B file system, IPFLITE network stack and ARINC 615A dataloader, Green Hills Software now offers system developers and integrators a single-source solution for their high assurance operating system and related software components without relying on third party software products or certification services. In contrast, alternative RTOS products, unable to offer a single-source high assurance operating system solution, can only suggest that a customer’s required DO-178B Level A-compliant software components be obtained from their “partner ecosystem.” The facts are simple. A single-source solution from an RTOS vendor, such as Green Hills Software, that does not rely on third party products or certification services significantly reduces risk over a “partner ecosystem” solution. RTOS vendors recommending a file system from a third party supplier, cannot adequately assure the successful integration and certification of all components on the customer’s flight hardware, nor can they guarantee the correct operation and intended behavior of the separately acquired components throughout the life cycle of the customer’s airborne equipment.
Industry Perspective
As the first commercial, partitioned operating system to be certified to the FAA’s and EASA’s highest safety-critical level (RTCA/DO-178B Level A) back in 2002, Green Hills Software has reliably continued to evolve its INTEGRITY-178B technology by delivering a DO-178B Level A-compliant RTOS for twenty-five different microprocessors, more than all other major RTOS suppliers combined. Green Hills Software has continued to meet customer’s critical deadlines reliably by providing them with a true DO-178B Level A-compliant RTOS that is ready to run on custom flight hardware with hardware specific certification evidence that the customer can take full credit for, right out of the box. Other RTOS vendors, claiming for years their ability to provide “certifiable” partitioned operating systems, have failed to deliver their end product.
Driven by the increasing demand for software suppliers to comply with government and industry-accepted safety and information assurance standards, other RTOS suppliers are constantly announcing new and different high assurance operating systems, whereas Green Hills Software has continued to maintain and improve its hallmark operating system technology that was first delivered in 1997. This approach has proven to strengthen the Green Hills Software 12-year pedigree of its safe and secure operating system technology for the high assurance computing marketplace.
About PJFS-178B
The PJFS-178B Client provides a standards-based interface that allows a safety- or security-critical application to access the underlying file system. The PJFS-178B Server handles PJFS-178B Client API requests, manages access to the underlying storage device(s), and provides interfaces to configure the file system as well as format and mount disks. The PJFS-178B Server operates in one partition and communicates with one or more PJFS-178B Clients. The PJFS-178B Client and PJFS-178B Server can reside in the kernel or any virtual partition. The combined strength and sophistication of INTEGRITY-178B and PJFS-178B allows the DO-178B Level A-compliant host PJFS-178B file system to service multiple file system clients at different safety levels in an ARINC 653 environment.
Additional Options for PJFS-178B
• Support for the ARINC 653 Part 2 File System Interface This specification was developed by an ARINC-sponsored committee consisting of avionic equipment vendors and operating system suppliers. The specification defines a general-purpose file system interface that provides support for file and directory services.
• Wear-Leveling Flash
The DO-178B Level A-compliant Wear-Leveling Flash (WLF) device is an INTEGRITY-178B device that provides an interface to a physical hardware storage device used to preserve data in a non-volatile storage medium. The WLF architecture provides user access to sectors of flash memory without requiring any knowledge of the physical layout of flash memory. It reduces the wear on individual physical flash blocks by distributing writes to flash memory across all available flash blocks. The WLF includes bad block management and supports both NAND and NOR flash devices.
• PJFS-178B can interface with the underlying storage device RAM disk or an I/O device.
About IPFLITE
The IPFLITE Client/Server architecture is based on RFC 791 and 768. The IPFLITE Client provides a BSD-style interface that can be used to access IPFLITE’s network services. The IPFLITE Server includes a Socket Server and an UDP/IP network stack. IPFLITE also contains a Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) library that is based on RFC 1350, 2347, and 2348, and is compatible with both the IPFLITE network stack and the PJFS-178B file system.
About the Green Hills ARINC 615A Dataloader
Green Hills Software’s dataloader protocol (DLP) library implements the protocols specified in ARINC 615A-2 used to perform uploads and downloads of data files. ARINC 615A-2 is an industry standard based on TFTP and is widely used in avionics systems. The DLP library provides the target side for interfacing to host-based ARINC 615A-2 dataloaders such as TechSat’s NetLoader as well as other host-based systems.
INTEGRITY: Proven, Deployed Technology
The INTEGRITY operating system includes a service history dating back to 1997, when it was first adopted by critical U.S. defense systems and commercial avionics that required absolute security and total reliability.
• Designed into dozens of aircraft including Boeing’s 787, C-17, B-1B, B-52; Airbus’ A380 and A400M; Lockheed Martin’s F-16, F-22, F-35, C-130J, P-3 and Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle; Sikorsky’s S-92; Northrop Grumman’s B-2;
• Secured military and intelligence computers, network routers, mobile devices, and radios;
• Received widespread adoption in medical, industrial control, automotive, and telecommunications.
The Ultimate Open Platform
With its open standards, POSIX-conformant interface, and ability to host arbitrary general purpose operating systems in virtual machines, such as Windows and Linux, INTEGRITY can run more application software than any other operating platform, while maintaining the absolute highest level of security for critical components, algorithms, applications, and subsystems. INTEGRITY enables solutions to many of the world’s long-standing computer security problems, including safe Internet browsing on corporate PCs; protection of critical enterprise servers; unhackable digital rights management (DRM); and multi-level security for government laptops, desktops, PDAs, and servers.
About Green Hills Software
Founded in 1982, Green Hills Software, Inc. is the technology leader in device software optimization (DSO) and real-time operating systems (RTOS) for 32- and 64-bit embedded systems. In 2008, the Green Hills INTEGRITY-178B RTOS was the first and only operating system to be certified by the NSA to EAL6+ High Robustness, the highest level of security ever achieved. Our INTEGRITY® and velOSity™ real-time operating systems, µ-velOSity™ microkernel, compilers, IPv6-ready TCP/IP networking stacks, GateD® Layer 2 switching and Layer 3 routing, MULTI® and AdaMULTI™ integrated development environments, DoubleCheck™ integrated static analyzer and TimeMachine™ tool suite offer a complete development solution that addresses both deeply embedded and high-reliability applications. Green Hills Software is headquartered in Santa Barbara, CA, with European headquarters in the United Kingdom. Visit Green Hills Software at www.ghs.com.